The Dunes Golf & Beach ClubSouth Carolina, USA

Thanks to its mature trees, rolling property, thoughtful bunkering and strategic use of other varied hazards, and built-up greens, The Dunes remains as popular today as when it opened in 1948. Hundreds of thousands of golfers have enjoyed it since, a lasting testimony to Robert Trent Jones Sr.'s skill as an architect.

The dean of modern golf course architects, Robert Trent Jones‘s career was groundbreaking. From being sought by a king in east Africa to designing a course on Sardinia for Aga Kahn to Spain to the dunes of Ballybunion, and across the United States of America including the Hawaiian islands, the range of sites upon which he worked is immense and the mark that he left behind around the globe is second to none. While The Dunes Golf Course was among the first dozen to open out of more than four hundred courses that bear his name, it may best highlight Jones’s views on golf course architecture to this day.

Born in 1906 in Ince, England, Robert Trent Jones was a true link from the Golden Age architects to the modern ones. He watched Donald Ross build Oak Hill in Rochester, New York where his parents had moved when he was three. Later, he joined Ross at the founding of the American Society of Golf Course Architects in 1946. Imagine sharing ideas with the likes of Ross, A.W. Tillinghast, William Langford, Perry and Press Maxwell! Robert Trent Jones greatly admired the work of Stanley Thompson and indeed became his partner after they met at a project at Midvale Golf and Country Club in Rochester. Thompson worked from Toronto and Robert Trent Jones in New York and their most famous project together was at Capilano where Robert Trent Jones deserves credit for the routing.

Some mistakenly call The Dunes Golf CourseRobert Trent Jones‘s first significant original eighteen hole design but Peachtree Golf Club outside Atlanta preceded it by two years. In fact, thanks to his close relationship with the other Jones (Robert Tyre Jones!), he had already gained fame prior to The Dunes Golf Course by remodeling the eighteenth green and sixteenth hole at Augusta National in 1946. Shortly after building The Dunes Golf Course, he modified the eleventh at Augusta National and then prepared Oakland Hills to host the infamous 1951 United States Open Championship. From then until at least the early 1980s, he was the the biggest name in golf course architecture. Importantly, this was at a time when numerous golf course projects took flight based on the new found idea of matching golf course construction to real estate sales. Fortunately at The Dunes Golf Course, all the homes are on the perimeter and are mostly well set back from the course. No holes play through rows of homes and Robert Trent Jones captured the best features with his routing over the core property.

Though The Dunes doesn't play through dunes, it was nonetheless a fine site for building a golf course. Jones's routing made the most of the rolling landscape as here, for instance, the tee ball at the third ideally needs to reach the plateau on the far side of the fifteen foot deep valley.

Until the day he died in 2000, his passion for golf course architecture never dimmed. He was a true student of it as well as an effective writer and he detailed to the American public in various articles the difference between penal and strategic architecture. Personally, he embraced and coined the phrase ‘heroic’ architecture. As he wrote in Golf’s Magnificent Challenge published in 1988, ‘ I decided long ago that the better way was a design I labeled heroic, a concept that demands a heroic carry or gamble for the better player to get into position for birdie but one that leaves an option for the lesser player to take the safer route. There must be a just reward for those attempting the heroic carry, and there must be a way around those unwilling to take the risk. Without the alternate route, heroic carries are unfair. Without the reward, heroic carries are meaningless.’

While Robert Trent Jones said, ‘Every hole should be a difficult par and an easy bogey,’ more attention has been historically placed on the first part of the sentence rather than the last. Make no mistake: Robert Trent Jones very much believed in giving the high handicap golfer a chance to enjoy himself, calling architecture that didn’t ‘inept’ and ‘cruel’. This overall design philosophy – of heroic architecture, of challenging the best while keeping it fun for the rest -comes shining through at The Dunes Golf Course. Hence, it is an important and rewarding course to study, not to mention a delight to play.

Holes to Note

Second hole, 425/385 yards, Needle’s Eye; Brad Faxon once told the author that one of the reasons that he liked Harbor Town so much was because of the trees and how the overhanging branches made one shape the ball both ways during one’s round. Many of the other courses on the PGA Tour don’t require the golfer to work the ball, such is the sad state of the modern power game where brute strength and distance are more cherished than shotmaking and finesse. That being the case, Faxon would love the second hole here as the golfer who can shape his tee ball from right to left and/or hit it high enough to carry the live Spanish oak trees on the inside of this sharp dogleg left can have two or three clubs less into the green than the golfer who plays his tee ball straight ahead. Of course, golfers who are unable to work the ball are quick to grumble that the hole becomes a 210 yard lay-up off the tee, leaving them with a long hybrid shot into the green.

The bunker on the outside of the dogleg is 210 yards from the white markers and drives played toward it still leave a long shot in. Ideally, the golfer can draw his tee shot up and around the trees and be left with but a short iron for his approach.

Fourth hole, 505/465 yards, Temptation; Given the breadth of Robert Trent Jones‘s work over six decades, to try to categorize his work is both foolhardy and frequently misguided. Too many people falsely associate his design philosophy with the pinched fairway bunkers at Oakland Hills, not appreciating that was a unique, one-off commission for the express purpose of testing the world’s best. Robert Trent Jones‘s best original work features a high number of interesting risk reward options and angles of play and this hole is a prime example. Remember: This course was built in 1948. Augusta National and its gambling par fives had yet to register their full impact on the golfing landscape as the Masters wasn’t televised for years to come. Risk reward par fives featuring water hazards were still realtively few and far between. This hole roughly enjoys the same shape as the thirteenth at Augusta but in this case, a cluster of bunkers needs to be carried/contended with on the inside of the dogleg as opposed to a creek. Similar in distance to the thirteenth as well, a ten handicap who gets away a good drive can occasionally have a go at this green in two. For a wide range of skill sets, this is a very fun hole to play, so fun that it is almost a shame that it doesn’t come much later in the round where it would make a great swing hole.

If the golfer can bend his tee ball past two large fairway bunkers, he is left with a ~200 yard shot into this green. Pull it off and an eagle putt awaits!

Fifth hole, 205/180 yards, Ambush; Unlike many modern architects that followed him, Robert Trent Jones had a keen sense of economy and he moved dirt only where it mattered the most, especially in his early work such as here at The Dunes Golf Course. Take this hole for instance. While the space that it occupied was dead flat and featureless, he only built up a green pad and a tee area. Otherwise, he didn’t touch any earth. By doing so, he was able to give this hole good golfing qualities while it still ties off and fits with its surrounds. Congratulations to The Dunes Golf Course for the 2003 greens restoration by Rees Jones whereby A-1 bentgrass was installed and the bunker depth recaptured. There is plenty of dumbed-down golf on offer at Myrtle Beach but the club has never gone down that path.

Jones built up the fifth green pad enough to cut two deep bunkers into its face. The putting surface falls away to the back left and the golfer with the skill to hit a shot of this distance with height enjoys an advantage.

This six foot three inch golfer could barely see the putting surface from the left bunker.

Sixth hole, 465/415 yards, Devil’s Bite;The Dunes Golf Course plays much longer than its yardage indicates in part because the drives here, at the third, seventh, fifteenth and eighteenth holes all hit into upslopes in the fairway, thus killing much run. The golfer in turn has an uphill stance for his approach shot, which requires an additional club. In addition, his built-up green sites such as the one found here often times best reward the golfer who flies his approach well onto the putting surface. When taken together, these three playing characteristics stretch the course out, making it plenty of challenge for just about any event the club wishes to host.

Jones built bunkers into the upslope of the fairway and the golfer needs to flirt with them in order...

... to have the best angle into the pushed-up sixth green. Approach shots played from the right half of the fairway must contend with the right greenside bunker.

Ninth hole, 200/170 yards, Dunes; When viewing Robert Trent Jones‘s body of work as a whole, some lament the lack of ground game options. Essentially, many of his targets tend to be elevated and require some sort of aerial shot. Such is true with this one shotter but he had two very good reasons for doing so. First, the tall green pad helps block the sight of cars along the entrance road and second, the elevated green provides the best view of the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, it is the only real time that the golfer sees the ocean during the round (the back porch of the club is the place for superlative views), and this despite the fact that the majority of the course lies within 1,500 yards of the ocean. Subsequent developers of courses along the South Carolina coast (e.g. Harbour Town and The Ocean Course at Kiawah) set aside more water frontage than here and these newer courses that afford the longer, uninterrupted views have since stolen some of the spotlight away from The Dunes Golf Course.

The low-lying understated clubhouse is in the near background but unfortunately the large hotel in the distance now dominates the view from the ninth tee.

The elevated ninth green is wide but only twenty-two yards deep. With four fronting bunkers, Jones's design clearly calls for an aerial approach shot.